


The Night is Here, the Day is Gone

by gearyoak



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Yikes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9318533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearyoak/pseuds/gearyoak
Summary: And the world spins madly on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i've made a mistake

Rebooting was like coming back to life.

One could make the argument that, in a way, it sort of _was_ like coming back from the dead. For a consecutive six seconds (ten if something was wrong) Genji’s entire body shut down, and then promptly restarted. Resuscitated, but without the electric shock and the fists pounding at his chest. It was just as disorienting, like waking up when you weren’t ready to. Most of the time, his systems get sent into standby – his version of sleep – immediately after the startup. There were some rare cases where he was he conscious for the reboot, but only for a few seconds at a time.

In this moment, he hears murmuring of working doctors and the hum of machines, and feels like he’s drowning. His faceplate is still on and the visor is dead. In the darkness, he breathes in hardly-filtered air. His lungs – or what replaced them – burns like struck flint. He still can’t move his limbs, not even his neck, can’t remove the faceplate that felt to be suffocating him. Then, somehow, logically, through the hums and murmur, he thought. This was not suffocation, this was his body failing. Removing his faceplate would do nothing, he would still choke on his chords and wires, on the hums and murmurs.

“ _Don’t worry, darlin’,”_ a hum said to him right after the thought passed.

A murmur spoke in the same voice. “ _We’ll get you fixed up real qui – “_

Genji’s vision had been black, and then followed his thoughts and the murmurs and the hums. Lost in the startup.

 

)(

 

When he woke up and stayed awake, he wasn’t wearing his armor. He had been stripped down to his flesh, organic and synthetic, and then dressed back up in Overwatch fatigues. The fabric of the clothes was crisp, came packaged in plastic until they were needed, and smelled like the hospital sheets he laid on.

There was no more pain in his body. It no longer hurt to breathe.

Next to his bed was a chair, empty and turned away from him to face the wall.

Genji sat up, and Doctor Ziegler was already leveling him with a strange look. “How are you feeling, Genji?” Her voice was clear and controlled, a tone she’d practiced.

“I am well.”

“No soreness? Any numbness? Pain?”

“I have not felt anything yet.” Yet.

They were avoiding something.

“That is good to hear,” Ziegler decided, voice still even. Neutral.

A silence stretched between them and they spent it staring at each other. It was Genji’s shuddering breath that finally broke it. He looked back to the chair off to his right, stark white and stout. Empty.

When Genji was last awake, he had been dying; the time before that, he was being killed. He’d heard hums and murmurs then, too, but they were rushed and hurried. He remembered hearing gunfire and sirens distantly. Despite the agony, he had been warm in a golden light –  and had a hand under his head, a thumb on the cheek of his visor.

“ _Don’t worry, darlin’,”_ he remembered hearing. “ _We’ll get you fixed up real qui – “_

“Genji,” Doctor Ziegler started, and then swallowed. He looked away from the chair. Her eyes were blue and flat. Genji didn’t want to hear what she had to say. “There is something you must know.”

There was another pause, because Genji was sure something should have happened then. Something like the feeling of a fist of ice gripping at his throat, or his stomach turning. Something. Maybe hope; as if he could trick himself to think Ziegler’s careful voice was an omen of good news. Anything but this empty feeling, stark white and stout. Empty like the chair.

“After the EMP went off, your cybernetics were affected. You went offline for nearly seven minutes. Fortunately, your system was able to keep you alive without life support long enough, but the reboot kept you unconscious.” Doctor Ziegler spoke to him as if he was her commanding officer –   _professional,_ like stating a mission report or relaying a debriefing. Speaking as a doctor so she didn’t have to as Angela.

The fear came, then, and Genji wished he could find his voice. He wanted to scream at her and beg for her to stop. He wanted to wake up again, this time in his bed and under two blankets with a warm body pressed to his side.

“During that time,” Ziegler continued. She could no longer look at her patient, and instead locked her gaze onto the bedside chair. “Agent McCree suffered a – “ She choked on her words, her façade crumbling before her. Flat, blue eyes grew wet; they became human.

“ _No_ , Angela.” Denial. Desperation. Genji wished to be anywhere but there, somewhere where the implications behind her words were false, impossible. Unthinkable. Untrue.

Ziegler swallowed again. From her spot at the end of the bed, she walked until she stood before the bedside chair. The room was alive with the _hum_ and _murmur_ of machine and fluorescent lights, but every step seemed to echo around Genji, each one sounding like a gunshot.

“ _Don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll fix you up real qui – “_

“When the shuttle reached the rendezvous, it was – he had been gone for _too long_.” Angela stared down into the chair, at the white cushion, and she cried. “There was nothing I could do – I tried, I swear it to you,” she said – fiercely, hopelessly – to him. To herself. She bent down and picked up something from the seat.

Genji tried to breathe, tried to see through eyes that became too blurry. The chair wasn’t empty, never was.

“ _Angela._ ”

“I am so sorry, Genji,” Angela told him, her voice hardly anything more than a strangled sob. Red fabric was clutched in her hands, close to her chest, spilling through her fingers like blood trapped in motion. “You have to know that. I am so, _so sorry_.”

The bundle of red was pressed into his hands. It was thick, like one of the blankets on his bed that he’d curl under; familiar like them, too. Angela’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him into her, head resting on her shoulder. She whispered into his hair and wiped her tears as they came. He let his fall, watched the material soak them up until the fabric grew darker.

Genji knew what dying felt like, and had always been devastated that everyone he loved and cared for would have to feel it, too.

“ _Don’t worry, darlin’. We’ll get you fixed up real qui –_ “

The serape smelled like gun smoke.

**Author's Note:**

> me: wow the mcgenji tag is lookin a lil sad, I should write some fluff to make myself happy  
> me, as dark kermit: kill mccree


End file.
